Isata Kanneh-Mason/ The Odora Trio

I spoil myself sometimes. Sometimes you have to. With two concerts on my Autumn schedule on the same day, I first went East, then back West. First to,

The Odora Trio, Chichester Cathedral, 1 October



Haydn is at his most Mozartian in the Piano Trio no. 21 in C major. Certainly in the first two movements, even if one can usually distinguish one from the other, it could have fooled me. Sophie Hinson's violin and Songean Choi's piano echoed each other or played in unison in a friendly contest for our attention with Harriet Butterworth's cello underscoring the action. Haydn is never less than enjoyable and if rarely found in anything less than a good mood, the Andante, which is often my own preference, was beautiful and beautifully done. If it weren't for the expectations of classical form, we might sometimes be allowed to finish with a poignant feeling but that never happened in those days and we are left with a rousing presto to liven us up for the applause.
Impressive as the Odora Trio are, it was especially impressive that they could make a late programme change. I might have been disappointed they dropped the Beethoven Ghost Trio but it was for the astute reason of local interest, being in Chichester and deciding to play John Ireland instead, who has Sussex connections. The impressive part is that they had it in their repertoire and could bring it in all its emotional intensity and, I dare say, technical difficulty, to expand our horizons. It's fair to say one hears Beethoven quite a lot. Less so, John Ireland.
I even impress myself sometimes. The Piano Trio in E sounded WW1 to me so I was glad to come home to look it up and find it was written in 1917. Harriet had a more prominent role here in the cello part, the piano doing plenty but not necessarily the thematic work. My note on the third movement is sadly indeciperable but I think that was the moving, powerful passage before the climax of the last moving into higher, passionate registers to a climax of great drama. It's a good, if potentially risky, thing to replace Beethoven with such an adventurous piece but I was grateful. That wasn't what I went for but I went away happy.
Top marks to the Odoras, after which I took lunch in the Cloisters Cafe before joining the Guided Tour at 2.30. I've been to Chichester Cathedral any number of times and like to think I know about it but there was much more to know than that. Our guide was a dry wit and most informative. I wondered if he might roll out the usual trite summary of Larkin's Arundel Tomb but he was too good to do that.
But, as any teacher must know, one can't dish out top marks to everything that's very good because you might need it later for something that is in a different league. You need to save your 9's and 10's out of 10 for when you really need them and travelling back west and west again, I very soon did.

Isata Kanneh-Mason, Turner Sims Concert Hall, Southampton, 1 October.

Of course I was a Sheku fan. I can't imagine anybody not being. But he is Isata's brother now for me, if anything, rather than Isata being Sheku's sister. There are four more Kanneh-Masons coming through so there's no need to worry about them running out. But any of them will be doing fantastically well to approach the spellbinding, luminous performance by Isata on the Turner Sims Steinway, beginning with some Brahms and moving into much of her Clara Schumann album.
Not specifically my area, Romantic music, as a Baroque, Bach, Handel and Buxtehude man but I'm readily convinced in the face of sufficient evidence.
The introductory Brahms programme was lyrical, composed and on the sensible side of lush. At 23, Isata is a compelling performer, concentrated but relaxed, confident and entirely in her element, her eyes and expression telling the story as it moves through its thoughtful exposition.
I'm sure others do the same sometimes, more accurately than me, but I sometimes hear completely inappropriate other music in the music I'm hearing and the Brahms selection ended by pre-echoing Brian Eno's Another Green World. Of course it doesn't but all music eventually links together somehow. One of the Clara Schumann pieces here and on the album is, for me, the Ave Maria piece and no matter what it's really called, that's what it's likely to remain.
If my preference is always going to be for the quiet parts, the slow bits and some reflection, and Isata does those with a disarming maturity that is also fresh and somehow miraculous, it almost defies me to say that the faster, flashier passages might be what she's even better at although comparisons are invidious and unnecessary. Such an idea might have been suggested in the Schumann Sonata but the case was pressed more firmly yet by the encore. The Chopin Prelude no. 24, rumbling throughout in the left hand while the astonishment takes place higher up the keyboard.
I know I've had a good time when I can't trust myself to speak, when something's gone beyond these useless words. It doesn't happen very often but one never forgets those occasions. I announced the end of my end-of-year summary of 'best' in such categories as poetry, novel, CD and event after doing it for ten years last year but if Best Event needed to be decided for 2019, this was it, no question, never mind that I missed The Sixteen doing the Monteverdi Vespers in February.
What is the point of trying to write a review only to say words fail you. No point at all.
Only one encore was a crying shame but she's nothing if not cool and completely the business. She didn't even give it a thought
You have to save your 10/10's for occasions like this. 
Sensational. 10/10.